Saratoga Wine & Food Festival reinvents itself

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
SPAC Reflecting Pool

This year’s SPAC Wine & Food Festival will take place around the Rellecting Pool. Photo courtesy of Bigler Productions.

We’ve reported from time to time on the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival, an event on the grounds of SPAC that used to happen the weekend after Labor Day. Watching Zak Pelaccio break down a pig, a burger bash in which fine dining chefs attempted to outdo one another, seeing Ric Orlando cook up shrimp and grits and getting his recipe are some of our favorite memories. In recent years, however, the festival got a bit lazy with fewer side events and athletes replacing celebrity chefs as the top attraction.

No longer. Saratoga Performing Arts Center President & CEO Elizabeth Sobol has thrown the rule book out the window, starting with moving the date to leaf-peeping season on October 4 and 5 and the venue to the dramatic Reflecting Pool outside the Hall of Springs. Although admission is not cheap—this is SPAC’s main fundraising event of the year, after all—there are some fascinating preview presentations you can attend at no charge.

The “Cultivate Series” kicks off on October 1 with talks and presentations by Soul Fire Farm co-founder, author, activist and farmer Leah Penniman; author of Fasting and Feasting Adam Federman, and Ayurvedic expert and classically trained chef Austin Peltier. The events are presented in partnership with Pitney Meadows Community Farm and Skidmore College. Admission is free, but space is limited so reservations are highly recommended. Tickets here.

Chef at SPAC Wine & Food Festival

The Festival will feature chef-prepared specialties made with local and sustainable ingredients. Photo courtesy of Bigler Productions.

If that whets your appetite, you can head on over to the “Forest Magic” Farm-to-Table Harvest on Friday night, curated by Kim Klopstock of Lily and the Rose in collaboration with John Sconzo of Rascal & Thorn and a number of top chefs we’ll highlight in another post. Teams of two chefs will each present a course that incorporates sustainable and locally sourced ingredients. We volunteered earlier this summer at the Pitney Meadows Fire Feast, also a collaboration involving Klopstock and Sconzo, and predict this will be special. Tickets here.

The Grand Tasting will return on Saturday, October 5, though without the display of classic cars that made for an upscale but odd pairing in previous years. Still more celebrity chefs will be on hand preparing dishes to sample, along with so many representatives of local restaurants and beverage purveyors that you’ll need a strategic plan (which we’ll share in our next post) to get through it all. The Grand Tasting will also feature a sculpture garden curated by The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, and live music sponsored by Caffè Lena. Tickets here.

SPAC’s Sobol sums it up: “The underlying ethos of this year’s festival is socially-conscious cultivation and consumption. Pairing in-demand international talent with our progressive regional chefs gives our community the opportunity to experience exquisite culinary artistry, incorporating local sustainable ingredients for a truly collaborative farm-to-table inspired event.”

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Our five most popular recipes of 2019

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers

September is the anniversary of this blog, and every year we report the most popular posts during the previous 12 months. We checked the non-recipe posts a couple weeks back; here are the five most popular recipes of 2019. Let’s go.

  1. Halal Guys White Sauce. No surprise here, since discussion of the intentionally misleading recipe clues from some foodie titans dwarfed other topics this past year. Here is the real deal, the actual recipe the Halal Guys use (well not exactly actual because they make it from scratch and we’re using mayo as a shortcut.)
  2. Amish Creamed Celery. This is a home-grown recipe developed right on this blog, informed by the sweet/sour cream sauces of the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition and the alleged Amish fascination with celery as a symbol of fertility. Also, it’s delicious.
  3. Vinegar Peppers. An essential ingredient in Chicken Riggies and other Utica-style Italian-American dishes. Prep couldn’t be easier and you’ll always be ready with a tart accent for your dishes.
  4. German-Style Head Cheese (Souse). We love this stuff and are impressed that a huge number of readers apparently have access to fresh pig’s heads. But if you are into pickled offal, please check out Amish-Style Pickled Tripe in Aspic which is a much more exciting breakthrough.
  5. Aji Roja. This is essentially Peruvian ketchup: a well-balanced tomato-based sauce you can serve on a variety of savory items. The Peruvians put it on beef heart; you can try it on burgers and hot dogs if you like.

So it seems our readers are offal-centric and avid for culinary details from the nether regions of our planet. Not a bad way to end up the year.  See our most popular non-recipe posts here.

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Recipe: Okra and Onions

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Okra and Onions

Okra and Onions

Reader Enough Already! pointed me to this simple and delicious recipe for Okra and Onions which originally appeared in the New York Times. It’s a great way to prepare squash or other late-season produce, as well as okra. Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients:
1 lb okra, stems removed and sliced in half lengthwise
1 medium onion, approximately 1 c, peeled and cut in half then sliced into halfmoons
3 T olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Shiso, mint or basil for garnish

Method: preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss the okra and onions in olive oil then spread out on a cookie sheet. Roast 20 minutes, until onion is softened and okra is beginning to brown. Salt and pepper to taste then garnish with chopped herbs.

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Recipe: Schug Yemenite Green Sauce

Posted on September 17, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Schug

Schug, ready to work its magic

Try our schug recipe on your next falafel pita: a dollop of yoghurt sauce or Halal Guys White sauce, a schmear of schug and you’re in heaven. We concocted our schug recipe based on a version from Adeena Sussman, then tinkered till it was more well-rounded than simply volcanic so you can eat more of it without exploding. Makes 1 cup.

Ingredients:
1 c finely packed cilantro leaves, or parsley leaves, or a mixture, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 jalapeño pepper, stemmed and chopped but with seeds and veins intact
½ t Kosher salt
½ t ground cumin
½ t ground cardamon
½ t ground black pepper
1 T lemon juice
1 T or more extra virgin olive oil

Method: combine all ingredients in a mini food processor and purée to a coarse grind–smooth but with distinct bits of leaves. It should be moist but without pooling olive oil; if too dry add another T olive oil and mix a bit more. Transferred to a container with a lid and let the flavors blend for 2 hours or more. Taste and add more salt if needed. Will keep a few days in the refrigerator.

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Recipe: Stewed Okra with Tomatoes

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Okra with Tomatoes

Stewed Okra with Tomatoes

Stewed Okra with Tomatoes is a universal preparation down south; households from Key West to Deep Ellum are making it right now as you read this recipe. This is comfort food, filling and mildly spiced, to be eaten alongside more assertive dishes. If you’re not a fan of okra slime, you can rest easy: it completely disappears as the vegetables are stewed. Makes 4 serving.

Ingredients:
2 c okra, stems removed and cut crosswise into ½ inch pieces
2 T bacon fat or neutral cooking oil
½ c chopped onion
½ c chopped celery
10-oz can RO-TEL Original Diced Tomatoes and Green Chilies* OR 14.5-oz can stewed tomatoes and ½ jalapeño, seeds and veins removed and coarsely chopped
½ c water (omit if using the larger can of stewed tomatoes vs RO*TEL)
Pinch of dried cumin (optional)
½ t salt (or more if needed)
½ t ground black pepper

Method: sauté onion and celery until limp; add other ingredients. Simmer 25 minutes until okra is soft. Finished product should be moist but not soupy; check after a few minutes and take the cover off the pot if there’s too much liquid, or add water if it is getting dry. Serve warm; tastes at least as good the next day.

*Not a product plug. RO-TEL tomatoes are a very popular southern ingredient but plain tomatoes with a bit of chile makes an okay substitute.

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Recipe: Niter Kibbeh (Ethiopian clarified butter)

Posted on September 10, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Niter Kibbeh

Niter Kibbeh, in solid and liquid forms

Niter Kibbeh is the cooking medium for many Ethiopian dishes, providing a flavorful undertone to more aggressive spices. It should be fragrant, herbaceous in taste but without the heat of berbere or other red pepper. The recipe is very flexible and can be modified for your preferences and your pantry. My version is based on Kittee Berns’ Ye’qimem Zeyet (spiced vegetable oil) in Teff Love with only minor tweaks. Makes a little less than a pint.

Ingredients:
1 lb unsalted butter
⅓ cup minced red onion or shallots
2 T garlic, chopped
1 T dried koseret OR Mexican oregano* (optional)
1 T dried besobela OR holy basil** (optional)
1 T peeled and grated fresh ginger
½ teaspoon whole ajwain seeds*** (optional) OR dried thyme leaves
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon whole fenugreek seeds
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
½ teaspoon whole nigella seeds (optional; see page 6)
6 fresh basil leaves (optional)
6 whole cloves
1/8 t grated nutmeg

Method: melt the butter in a heavy saucepan under very low heat; it should be barely bubbling when rendered. Add all other ingredient and simmer under very low heat for one hour, stirring occasionally to make sure the bottom is not getting too hot. Remove larger pieces of spices with a slotted spoon then strain through cheesecloth or paper towel into a clean, warm pint jar. Will keep quite a while in your refrigerator.

*Koseret is a flowering herb growing in mountainous regions of Ethiopia. You’ll probably have a hard time finding it unless you have access to a good African store. Mexican (not regular) oregano is from the same family so I’ve offered it as a replacement.

**Besobela tastes and smells like thyme mixed with lavender. It can be found in health food stores or bulk spice departments where it’s sold as tulsi or holy basil.

***Kittee Berns uses ajwain in a number of her recipes so it’s worth seeking out in a specialty spice department. Its bitter taste is similar to, but not the same as, dried thyme. Another name for ajwain is “bishop’s weed”; this is a very common invasive plant in the Northeast and I’d be interested if any readers have successfully harvested the seeds.

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Our five most popular non-recipe posts of 2019

Posted on September 5, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers

September is the anniversary of this blog, which means it’s time once again to peek at our stats and report the most popular posts of the past year. Let’s start with the five most popular non-recipe posts of 2019:

  1. The Halal Guys white sauce mystery… SOLVED! We predicted this would happen a year ago, and sure enough there’s been a daily drumbeat that finally totaled 13,403 views, far more than any other post on the blog. It’s worth noting that less than half of readers clicked through to read the actual recipe that solved the mystery… support for a theory that many people prefer arguing about food to actually eating it.

  2. The sauce that made Mr. Durkee famous. So much love for a product we eat (in my house anyway) only once a year. This is one of the oldest posts on the blog, and we recently cleaned up a number of broken links which made for a rise in Google rankings. Did Mrs. Lincoln actually invent Durkee’s while in the White House? Was it once made by a paint company? Read the post to find out!

  3. Hacking the Salt & Char Ribeye Cap Steak. In which we reproduce the signature dish of the very upscale Saratoga Springs steak house for preparation in your own home. David Burke, the new Executive Chef at Salt & Char, now makes the rib cap with Wagyu beef and charges $78 for a nine-oz portion. For the same amount of money you could buy a whole prime rib roast, cut off the cap, and essentially have a free entrée to serve for your holiday meal.

  4. What’s the best flour for baking bread? A perennial favorite because it answers a question any beginning baker has (or should have) and provokes discussion among more experienced bakers. Hint: it’s not the sacks of King Arthur Sir Galahad brand you see stacked up at your favorite bakery… or maybe it is.

  5. The cure for watery steak. Who knew this was such a problem? If you suffer from watery steak, here are two possible causes and two easy ways to fix it. Once you finish reading the post, check the “related” at the bottom of the page for other articles of interest on preparing red-meat magnificence. Seems like we hate to pay for steak, but we love writing about it!

Coming soon: the 5 most popular recipe posts of 2019.

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Trader Joe’s Jalapeño Sauce? No, gracias!

Posted on September 3, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Trader Joe Jalapeño Sauce

Trader Joe’s Jalapeño Sauce

We are huge fans of many Trader Joe’s products. Like their aged “1000 day” Gouda, the giant bricks of semisweet chocolate and raw cashew pieces we use in our Cashew Coconut Clusters, ridiculously affordable Boatswain Ale and those pricey Cheese Bites. We are not above grabbing a few produce or meat or dairy items in a pinch, and have found them to be consistently of good quality and well-priced. In fact, until now we have never found a Trader Joe’s product we would emphatically NOT recommend.

Enter Trader Joe’s Jalapeño Sauce.

We grabbed a bottle of this relatively pricey ($3.49 for 10 oz) product at a feature display this past winter. We’ve put it through its paces as a taco topping and in many other instances where you want a green (=vegetal) topping. It’s just not hitting the mark. The jalapeño flavor is way too mild and it mostly tastes of an emulsion of generic green stuff in a fatty base. It’s the textbook definition of “empty calories”, adding fat and a bland mouthfeel without much flavor enrichment.

Fresh jalapeños are amazing, and universally available. If you like the flavor, just chop up a fresh pepper, removing the seeds and veins if you are timid, and add to your whatever. Green sauces are also pleasant. If you crave a verdant coating to your meat or veggies, try our aji verde.

But Trader Joe Jalapeño Sauce? No, y bienvenidos a la basura!

Have you ever been disappointed with a Trader Joe’s product? Please share in the comments!

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Hacking Trader Joe’s Cheese Bites

Posted on August 29, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Parmesan Gran Padano Cheese Bites

Copycat Trader Joe’s Cheese Bites made with parmesan and Gran Padano

Trader Joe’s Cheese Bites and similar products are taking the world by storm. They were one of the top trends we identified at the recent Fancy Food Show in NYC. And what’s not to love? They’re delicious, full of protein and have zero carbs so they’re perfect for keto diets.

But the bites are not cheap, starting at $2.40-2.70 for a 2.11 oz (60 g) bag at Trader Joes and going up from there. So perhaps we can save some money by making an equivalent product at home? A blogger named Become Betty had already done the groundwork, identifying the cheese ratio at Trader Joes as 1 part Parmesan and 3 parts Grana Padano, an aged version of Parmesan, and recommending a cooking time of 11-14 minutes at 400 degrees for a shredded mixture.

Cheese Bites Ready for Oven

Cheese bites on silicone pad, ready for the oven

So we set out to make ourselves a bunch of cheese bites. We bought grated parmesan for $6.99 and Gran Padano at $12.99 at our co-op and shredded the latter, then mixed them and made bites of a heaping teaspoon each. Become Betty uses a “mini muffin tray” which we didn’t have but we cooked some in a muffin pan, others heaped on a silicon pad atop a half sheet pan. In they went for 10 minutes, checked to see if they would need longer cooking time. They didn’t.

Broken Cheese Bites

Cheese Bites cooked in muffin tins broke apart when removed

After 10 minutes the water had evaporated from the cheese and the fat had oozed out and the cheese coalesced into an appealing wafer. We got the best results from the pieces on the open silicone pad.  The ones in the muffin pan fried on the bottom and stuck when we tried to get them out, then broke into less appealing but entirely edible pieces. The verdict? Delicious, as good as Trader Joe’s.

Cheddar Cheese Bites

Cheddar Cheese Bites

Next we tried a combo of one part parm, 3 parts sharp cheddar. This didn’t go well. The extra moisture in the cheddar made the wafers spread out too much when cooking but much worse, they had an ingredient that gave them a burned/bitter taste. At least we didn’t spend a lot of money on this experiment: our cheddar was just $5.99 lb.

Swiss Cheese Bites

Swiss Cheese Bites

Finally we took some cheap ($6.99/lb) swiss cheese and mixed it with parm 50/50 since the cheddar had been disappointing. This worked out well. Light, crispy, airy; one taster dubbed this the favorite of the evening.

If you have been keeping track of prices and quantities, you are guessing we saved money big time except on the Gran Padano version. But what we haven’t told you is that the amount of cheese by weight reduced almost 50% in each case as water and fat boiled away. The net cost by finished weight:

4.64 cents per gram for Gran Padano prep
1.60 cents per gram for cheddar fiasco
2.77 cents per gram for Swiss/parm mix
4.48 cents per gram for Trader Joe’s cheese bites at $2.69.

So you may or may not be saving money but it isn’t very much. If you consider that Trader Joe’s product started at around 4 ounces assuming the same attrition, that’s around $10/lb which is not bad at all for quality cheese. Meanwhile, we had a bunch of greasy pans to clean.

Now that we’ve got the basics down, we may try an all-parm version. And we’ll make some more of the Swiss for the taster who liked them. But for day to day cheese desiccation, we’ll leave it to the Trader in the future.

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We check out Wholesome Pantry from ShopRite

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Wholesome Pantry Sweet Potato Tortilla Chips

Wholesome Pantry Sweet Potato Tortilla Chjips from ShopRite… delicious!

I agreed to sample the Wholesome Pantry line from ShopRite because I wanted to explore this chain anyway. But it turns out these products are really good! Some wicked clever food designer has picked up on the attributes people crave in snacks and taken them to another level.

Example: Sweet Potato Tortilla Chips really do have sweet potato as their third ingredient, after corn and oil, plus a bit of sugar! (No worries, it’s organic.) You get the crunch and familiar corn flavor but with a deeper, sweeter note. We ate the whole bag right away, but I think these would be amazing with guacamole.

Wholesome Pantry Maple Granola Bar with Pumpkin Seed

And: snack bars that really strut their stuff, rather than grinding up their featured ingredients. The Cranberry Almond Fruit and Nut Bar is festooned with big fat cranberries. The Maple Pumpkin Seed Granola Squares are covered with whole pumpkin seeds. The binding agent in these is agave and puffed rice, giving them a Rice-Crispy-squares texture which is quite appealing. Even humble Mango Slices were big and fat and dried to a perfect consistency which is chewy but quickly yields to hungry teeth.

As part of my assignment from ShopRite’s PR agency, I am supposed to report “how I’m snacking smarter this Summer”. Answer: I am going to get me some more of these treats, even though my nearest ShopRite is a good 30 miles away. Check out ShopRite.com/wholesomepantry and you’ll find that ShopRite has converted all its organic products (including bread and entrées) to Wholesome Pantry and they are now certified to contain 100% USDA Organic ingredients.

On my visit, I’ll also dig deeper into why ShopRite has some avid fans. My home base in the greater Albany/Capital District of upstate New York doesn’t have a single Ethiopian or Burmese or Filipino restaurant, but we’re burgeoning with supermarket choices. Price Chopper, a local chain that is also closest, is where I most often shop. For Italian specialties like Pastene Crushed Red Peppers, I’ll periodically visit Hannaford. We also have two smaller chains, Fresh Market and Healthy Living, and an outpost of Whole Foods. And of course there’s Walmart and Target for those who want to buy their food along with their sweatpants. And let’s not forget Trader Joe’s and its beehive parking lot.

Wholesome Pantry Packaging

Wholesome Pantry packaging

ShopRite is different because it’s the nation’s largest cooperative grocery chain, according to their website, which means stores or groups of stores are individually owned but share corporate management and distribution. As with any such operation, one can expect some variability from store to store.

The Albany location on Central Ave mostly impressed me with its vastness, while the Niskayuna store had narrow aisles, nooks and crannies and specials stuffed onto end caps, and the possibility of live uni at year-end (Sicilians use it for holiday pasta, and ShopRite is based in the Italian-American heartland of upper New Jersey). I missed it last year but they gave me the seafood department phone number so I can call and check next season.

I worked in supermarkets in many departments in my teens and learned that while they do their best to present an image of retail efficiency, they are at their heart overgrown delis. I look forward to exploring my semi-local ShopRite stores as I am stocking up on Wholesome Pantry.

This is a review of free product which was gobbled up by yours truly.

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